Larry Pinkney wrote a letter to the editor titled ‘Double standards’, published on April 21, 1986 in the Minnesota Daily:
The pretext for the American attack on Libya was to strike a blow against what President Reagan termed “the headquarters and terrorist facilities” of Moammar Khadafy. Once again the United States demonstrated its wanton disregard for the sovereignty of nations and international law, unequaled in contemporary world history.
Ronald Reagan, Casper Weinberger, George Bush, Jean Kirkpatrick and others have consistently harped on what they term “terrorisn” of nations and individuals against particular Americans throughout the world. However, the U.S. government itself indulges in state-supported terrorism as attested to by the testimony before the World Court at The Hague. America supported the mining of Nicaragua’s harbor and other civilian targets throughout that country.
The Reagan administration has categorically stated that every means short of military action had been attempted in order to persuade Khadafy to cease his “support of terrorist activities,” but these efforts had been unsuccessful. Thus, America saw fit to bomb Libya, inflicting its own brand of terrorism upon innocent women, men and children in that country.
America has never resorted to military actions against the murderous, apartheid government of South Africa. In fact. American corporations reap huge profits from the apartheid system of terrorism in South Africa, with whom America maintains diplomatic, economic and military ties.
America also finds it quite acceptable to support and maintain ties with the bloody regimes of Chile and South Korea, where state-sponsored terrorism against citizens of these countries is a daily reality.
Notwithstanding the fact that America’s most recent military attack on Libya is a massive breach of international law, it is also a further demonstration of America’s double standards vigorously applied when, most particularly, the lived of people of color are at stake. The Reagan clan is fully cognizant of the fact that no one individual, no one group, and no one nation is responsible for terrorism.
Whether one agrees or disagrees with Moammar Khadafy is not at all the point. The point is simple- America must deal with the root causes of terrorism: racism, injustices and the suppression of human aspirations throughout the world, including the United States itself. Ignoring and accommodating these injustices is in itself an act of terrorism.
I am angered and ashamed to have to say that America has once more shown the world that military retaliation is more often that not the highest from of stupidity and arrogance.
Larry Pinkney
International Relations
University Without Walls
Larry Pinkney is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities, Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, and more recently on the nationally syndicated Alex Jones Show and global news channel RT (Russia Today). Pinkney is a former university instructor of political science and international relations, and his writings have been published in various places, including The Boston Globe, San Francisco BayView newspaper, Black Commentator, Intrepid Report, Global Research (Canada), LINKE ZEITUNG (Germany), 107 Cowgate (Ireland and Scotland), and Mayihlome News (Azania/South Africa). Larry Pinkney wrote the Foreword to internationally known peace activist and human rights advocate Cindy Sheehan’s (2015) book entitled, ‘The Obama Files: Chronicles of an Award-Winning War Criminal.’ He is interviewed and quoted in Former U.S. Congresswoman and 2008 Green Party Presidential Nominee, Dr. Cynthia McKinney’s (2015) Ph.D. Dissertation (Antioch University) entitled, “El No Murio, El Multiplico!” Hugo Chavez: The Leadership and the Legacy on Race. He is in the archives of Dr. Huey P. Newton (Stanford University, CA), cofounder of the Black Panther Party. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click struggle-and-win.net Bill Mandel on Larry Pinkney to read excerpts from the book.)
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